Deveaux Woods (Niagara
Falls) An old-growth forest of approximately 10 acres is
present on the former DeveauxCollege campus of NiagaraUniversity, located along the Robert Moses Parkway,
a short distance from the Niagara
gorge. Here one can "step back in time" to see what much
of Western New York was like prior to European settlement. The site is
dominated by white, red and black oak trees and supports a fair
diversity of shrub, herb, moss, lichen, and mushroom species (Western New
York Old Growth Forest Survey 1994). The site is currently owned
by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic
Preservation. This old growth forest deserves permanent protection.

Flora of DeVeaux College Woods,

Niagara Falls New York

by P. M. Eckel

Research Associate

Division of Botany, Buffalo Museum of Science

From Clintonia, Magazine of the Niagara Frontier
Botanical Society

Supplement to Issue 1, January 5, 1986. Used with
permission.

Every shrub, tree or herb in the Niagara River Gorge and
Falls area is of historic importance. The vegetation is the matrix within
which human beings have discovered the soul-stirring spectacle of the Falls,
and is an inextricable part of the Canadian and American national treasure
that is the Niagara River. It is within the forest canopy that the Seneca
interacted with the French, the British, the (Revolutionary) Americans and
(Loyalist) Canadians; within its greenery that economic features developed
according to the genius of the national temperamentsof two nations,
and the international struggle to keep the Niagara woodlands took shape in
the mid to later 1800's. That struggle continues.

The Niagara River is a cradle where species of plants
found and still find protection throughout changes in climate over the past
8,000 years since glaciation, where boreal and southern species, native and
garden varieties take root and persist. The flora had and has an impressive
diversity for such a small area. The Gorge provides a variety of habitats that
attract different species associations: around seeps; dry, exposed areas
(crest of the gorge at Whirlpool Park); protected areas of late snow-melt
(Niagara Glen). There are large areas of primary woodland (Gorge wall,
Ontario side), and areas of woodland composed of alien trees (old Gorge train
route, American side). Within a region where the primary forest cover is a
Beech-Maple- Hemlock- Birch association of trees, there are significant areas
of Oak-Hickory woodlands, typical of more and lands to the south of New York
State. The woods associated with old DeVeaux College, now owned by Niagara
University, is an example of the latter.

Very little of the original forest cover remains on the
American side of the River. Goat Island, although once considered a primeval
woodland, is no longer so. Most of the woodland at the River's edge at the
base of the Gorge is replacement woods regenerating after denudation to
provide a bed for the famous Gorge Route Railway. Devil's Hole, since it lost
its natural spring due to encapturement of ground water associated with the
Robert Moses Power Project, has become more arid, with a probable loss of
species diversity and abundance there. Although not every area of the
American gorge has been examined by the author (e.g. the area between the
Sewage Treatment plant and the American Falls at the base of the Gorge; the
base of Goat Island), I believe it is safe to say that DeVeaux College woods
is the oldest, most unaltered woodland along the entire American Gorge,
including the Falls area, at the present time.

DeVeaux College woods lies in the City of Niagara Falls,
Niagara County, New York State, U.S.A., in the suburb of DeVeaux (formerly
called Suspension Bridge). It is bordered to the south by Findlay Drive, to
the west by the Robert Moses Parkway and Whirlpool State Park, to the north
by a row of high quality private residences, and to the east by the DeVeaux
College building complex, a National Register property (now owned by Niagara
University), this fronted by Main Street: a major thoroughfare. There are 50
acres of University land, of which the woods occupies ca. 2-3 acres. The
woods is bisected north-south by a fence, the eastern section belonging to
the University, and the western section to agencies that own the land over
which the Parkway lays: presumably the Power Authority of the State of New
York, maintained by the New York State Department of Transportation. Highway
maintenance may be administratively secondary to the administration of the
Niagara Reservation (New York State Dept. of Parks), which manages Power
Authority lands in and adjacent to the Gorge. The woods is again bisected
east and west by an open area of deforested lawn in which alien weeds and
horticultural trees, such as Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos), Black
Locust (Robinia pseudacacia), and endemic weedy vegetation (Staghorn
Sumac (Rhus typhina), Solidago and Aster spa.) have sprung up.
Both woods sections display an interesting variation in species composition,
mainly due to moisture availability, and how deep the soils are overlaying
the dolomite substratum: Red Oaks dominate some areas solely, but to the
north, Maples and Beech begin to increase in numbers. Both sections contain
indigenous species of mature forest in their midst. The woods grow on what
seems to be an old terrace of the Niagara River; the slope of the south
section is rather pronounced. There is a rather crude gravestone at the top
of the slope in the south section commemorating the death of a child.

The historic geographic extent of DeVeaux Woods could not
be determined by this printing, but by the late 1800's it was a unique
floristic area of interest to local botanists from Erie (David F. Day) and
Niagara Counties (Marion Jessup Wright and Edward C. Townsend of Lockport).
Charles A. Zenkert, who, along with Day, was a researcher for the Buffalo
Society of Natural Sciences (Buffalo Museum of Science), also collected in
DeVeaux woods in the 1930's. When Day was asked by the Commissioners of the
Niagara Reservation in 1886 to provide them with a catalogue of the Fall's
flora, species from DeVeaux Woods were mentioned along with those from Goat
Island, Whirlpool Woods (presumably at the base of the gorge, since there is
no native flora of the present Whirlpool State Park, except for what exists
on the very Gorge crest), Devil's Hole and Lewiston. The wood's boundaries
must have extended west of the current property limits (the fence), and
perhaps was curtailed by construction of the Robert Moses Parkway and adjacent
lawns by the State of New York in the early 1960's. The occurrence of some
species that cling to the exposed limestone on the Gorge rim, now in
Whirlpool State Park, and which occur in the catalogue below (Rhus
aromatica, Pellaea atropurpurea) may indicate the woodland once extended
to the rim boundary, an area that is now mown lawn with isolated trees.
Research into the past floristic character of this scientifically important
woodland will be difficult since the Woods had no scenic association, as did
other woodlands in the Gorge area, hence popular writings, photographs and
other depictions of the area will be scarce in comparison.

The following is a list of the species given in the
literature as having occurred at DeVeaux woods, and list of the specimens,
collectors and dates or collecting numbers of plants collected in the woods.
These specimens are curated in the Clinton Herbarium of the Buffalo Museum of
Science, where they may be examined by the interested public.

My own contributions represent the status of the flora in
1985. It is fairly complete, but represents only one year of collecting, and
doesn't represent all seasons. This list is offered here with discussion only
to bring to public attention the character and value of the woods vegetation,
since the woods is in danger of deforestation. Addenda to the species list
will be published in future issues of Clintonia.

Many taxa reported by myself here are represented in 1985
by severely restricted populations (e.g. Aster azureus (rare), Thalictrum
dioicum, Hamamelis virginiana or WITCH HAZEL), Taenidia integerrima). Further
habitat disturbance will eliminate these species entirely from this woodland
remnant, and perhaps from the Gorge flora altogether. In the case of Hamamelis
virginiana, only one tree exists throughout the area of the Niagara Falls
and Gorge south of Artpark (in Lewiston, New York); Aster azureus has
only been found here, as has Ranunculus hispidus.

A horticultural program by Niagara University, by the
Niagara County Community College, or New York State Department of Parks,
Recreation and Historic Preservation could oversee the gathering of viable
seeds from this stock, grow them and otherwise assist in revegetating the
old, and still significant, woodland.

The nomenclature of publications cited below (Day 1888;
Zenkert 1934) has been made to conform with that of Zander and Pierce (1979).

A few generalizations: no ferns were found in DeVeaux
woods in 1985. The only cryptogams found were the mosses Fiisidens
taxifolius and Amblystegium serpens on open, shaded soil. Some of
the ferns listed above require limestone boulders of some sort on which to
grow, and few such boulders were present.

Plants uncollected and unidentified due to absence of fruit
or flowers: an interesting spring, mat-forming species (Hydrocotyle?), blackberry (Rubus), gooseberry (Ribes), an orchid in the downriver
section, a vine (Apios?), a
hickory (Carya), an elm (Ulmus) species, ash (Fraxinus americana?) species, several woodland
(Carices, etc.

The most spectacular element of the forest (in a region of
spectacular natural features) are the old Red Oaks (Quercus borealis var. maximus), some of them over nine feet
in circumference, breast height. These Oaks tower above all the other trees,
forcing the maples, beeches and black cherries, etc. into their shade. Red
Oaks are present throughout the Niagara Gorge flora, and trunks of similar
circumference may be met with at the base of the escarpment in the Queen
Victoria Park, Niagara Falls, Ontario. All Red Oaks I have encountered in the
Gorge flora, Canadian and American sides, are infested in their canopies by
defoliating insects: either Pin Oak Sawfly (Caliroa lineata), or Fall Cankerwom (Alsophila pometaria) - neither of which
are deadly to the life of the tree. In DeVeaux Woods, a more critical problem
may be occurring in the root systems of its Red Oaks, and only trained
landscape or forestry personnel can adequately analyze the situation, and
recommend appropriate treatment. This treatment should not include cutting
any trees in DeVeaux woods. Such removal of trees will expose deep-woods
tolerant species to environmental stress, and competition with noxious weeds,
which I have already mentioned, now growing on the borders of the woods. The
destruction of the present, unique and historically significant character of
the woodlands would be assured.

The drier, warmer edaphic situation presented by dolomite
bedrock with its fracture-solution characteristics that affect rapid water
depletion from soils where the bedrock comes close to the surface has
produced a situation in which Oak-Hickory woodlands can compete with the
typical Beech-Maple woodlands of our region. The absence of Oak seedlings or
saplings in DeVeaux Woods, and the presence of young trees of presently
subdominant species, such as Maples, indicates that the Oaks are yielding to
the more typical (climax) forest association. If the Oak woodland is not a
climax woodland, then an interesting question comes to mind: did a
Maple-Beech woods precede this Oak one? Does the fact of Oak dominants on
limestone substrates in Maple-Beech climax regions always indicate a
preceding forest demise (e.g. through fire?). Can one give an approximate
date for such a demise by dating the age of Oak trees (ring-counting)? For
example, if the great Oaks of DeVeaux woods are more or less 150 years old,
may one speculate that the primeval woods disappeared (were burned, logged,
clear-cut) in the first half of the eighteenth century? At any rate, if
DeVeaux woods is not generally a primal woodland, it is a replacement forest
brought to a perfection of forest succession.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Day, David F. 1882. The plants of Buffalo and its
vicinity: Series 1, Phsenogsmae. Bull. Buffalo

Soc. Nat. Sci. 4(3):
66-152.

- - - - - - -- 1887. Catalogue of the Niagara Flora.
Annual Report of the Commission for the State

Reservation at Niagara for
the Year 1887, pp. 67-133. Also reprinted as a pamphlet, Troy,